A couple of years ago, I was spending around 4 hours a week mowing through spring. The lengthening days and moist soil of spring sends the grass rocketing for the sky, and if you don't mow, it rapidly becomes too long to push the mower over. One spring of push-mowing was enough for me, and by last spring I had rearranged fences so that I could slash the majority of the grass with the tractor.

Slashing is easier and quicker than push-mowing, but it still involves fuel, noise and exhaust, and is not a job I look forward to, and this year I have hit upon a more bucolic solution to the long grass problem. Cows!

Bella (at front, above) and Caramel have been roaming the paddocks all winter, but with the grass in theveggie patch becoming unmanageable, I've been putting up two-strand electric tape around the beds and letting the cows do the work. Moving the electric fences around does take time, but much less time than it takes to mow, and less time than slashing as well, if you count the changing over of the implements on the tractor. And the cows do a good job, getting right up to the fences (and occasionally the veggies if I've put the fence too close!).

Most recently, they cleaned up a manifold of 21 beds that contained brassicas that were no good anymore. By the time they had eaten all the broccoli, they were a little bored, so when I moved them into a run 100 metres by 3 metres, there was some kicking up of heels and some running hither and thither, such happy cows in the long grass!

For the last seven months I have been living away from my farm. In the mornings I've been commuting to the farm to do the day's work, then driving again in the evening to the mate's who's kindly shared his home with me. It's been a time of frustration, of living out of the back of my car, of forgetting things and having to drive to get them, of not being at the farm when I'm needed, when the ducks are eating the salad, or the tunnels are being scrapped by the wind, and there's been many days of having to finish up early due to rain, without the option of turning out later in the day to finish the job.

And it's taken this long to work out all the difficult family stuff, amidst the sturm und drang, not to mention the lawyers and banks.

But at last, on Friday, the settlement went through, and I'll be moving back to the farm next week, on a tide of ebullience...in time to take hold of the garden as she rises strong to spring.